Tail boom crease

First off -- there is a problem with the booze and strong wind. Knock off flying in the strong wind! That is if the booze was good pub bitter. If not; knock off the booze, too. Use it to celebrate a good flying session.

It depends on how bad it is. Models will still fly with an amazing degree of asymmetry. Just view the V-tail this way; seen from the side, the area you see is for yaw stability; seen from the top, the area you see is the pitch stability.

If the twist of the boom was very much, "up" would give less "up" but there would be some yaw introduced when giving a pitch command.

The reverse would be true...giving some yaw command would induce either some up or some down command.

Ken, who wishes he could have some real pub ale tonight.

As long as you haven't changed the angles too much, it can look as bad as you want -- the air can't see, after all.

Making the ruddervators (flaps) will, indeed, increase their authority. The thing will, in general, respond more promptly to stick input which will be a good thing when you're giving the right input and a bad thing when you're flying three sheets to a strong wind.

Don't quite get what you're saying. Are you both telling me a not quite perfect patch up job will fly? And will my lolly stick splint -yes lolly stick - affect the aerodynamics? You obviosuly know a thing or three about these birds, so what's usually the most damaging - hence grounding - damage they Aerobird can sustain? Cheers.

We are saying to not judge the flyability of a model by the quality of the repair.

Don't consider them lolly stick splints but think of them as bass wood reinforcing gussets, or Phase II doubling plates. If you think that is a weak place in the design...and apparently it is...then your repair is a modification that they might have thought of during the manufacture. The change will increase the survivability of the model...always a good thing.

I know nothing about that particular model. I have been flying all sorts of stuff...designing, developing, competing, crashing and repair all sorts of toy airplanes for 60 years. The air and gravity is pretty much the same now as it was then.

No one can answer that question about any model. If it won't fly and can't be repaired, then it is over, and you will then have the answer...but for only that particular model. With the next one, the questions, research, experimentation, and fun starts all over again.

If I could have learned all this on the first model, I would have been through with models a long time ago.

Ken

Yes

You'll add a tad more drag and weight, but probably nothing too bad. The worst thing you could do is seriously throw the balance off -- and you can fix that with your proposed ruddervator mod.

Nope. I've just been building and flying for 34 of my 44 years.

Anything that you can't fix. If you're a good scratch builder that probably means serious damage to the radio.